This invention in general relates to hands-free cellular communication systems for vehicles and, more particularly, to a system and method of configuring a portable wireless communication device when the device is connected to a vehicle.
Today, many people use portable wireless communication devices in their vehicles. For safety reasons, the industry is focused on providing hands-free features to people who use portable devices in their vehicle. There is a need for better performance and more efficient communications when a portable wireless communication device is connected to a hands-free system of a vehicle.
For instance, a portable wireless communication device may be connected to an external antenna on the vehicle when using the hands-free system. When using an external antenna, however, there may be unacceptable performance due to power losses associated with sending transmissions over vehicle cables that lead to the external antenna. If the power loss from the cables is relatively high, the hands-free system may yield worse performance than if the user simply unplugged the device and held the device to their head. To solve this problem, conventional factory installed hands-free systems use a RF compensator thatxe2x80x9ccompensatesxe2x80x9d for any power loss due to communicating through the cables leading to the external antenna. Compensators, however, are expensive and contribute significantly to the cost of the entire system. A system and method that eliminates the compensator and yet maintains acceptable performance would provide a significant cost benefit.
Additionally, there is a need for better ways to configure the portable wireless communication device so that it can efficiently communicate with a variety of hands-free systems. For example, in some hands-free systems, the device must be manually configured to forward incoming phone calls to an existing in-vehicle Telematics system such as the OnStar system provided by General Motors. The OnStar system provides hands-free personal voice communications through the audio system of the vehicle. A user, however, must manually forward calls from the portable wireless communication device to a special phone number designated by a system operator. Knowledge of the phone number is necessary. It would be beneficial to eliminate the manual operation of forwarding calls and make the system compatible to different vehicles.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an improved hands-free cellular communication system and method for dynamically configuring a portable wireless communication device to overcome or minimize most, if not all, of the preceding problems.